She has re-written history. "Particularly striking is Djebar's use of aphasia and silence, which she paradoxically employs as means of expression and of resistance against the forces of a male societal structure, forces which traditionally are said to promote both aphasia and silence as lack of expression in women" (Soheila Ghaussy). Algerian culture suffered a lot from the hands of the French. The French had aimed to shatter their religious values but the Algerians, men and women both resisted to this. They did not want to be liberated from anything but the French themselves. In a male oriented and dominated society, Assia Djebar has done a great work and presented us with the perspective on colonialism from the women's point-of-view. "The story of Djebar and the women freedom fighters is also the story of Algeria and the journey from colonization and subjugation to independent nation. Djebar's text refigures nationalist strategies by replacing history written by the colonizer with a history of heroic women" (Anonymous). Indeed what they did and the part which they played cannot be forgotten and credit should be given to...
[Online website] Available at http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/djebar.htm[Accessed on 22/09/2005]
The protagonist's resistance is thus effective, psychologically in the sense that the fire-watcher has been given a gift that other members of society and the world might lack, a sense of his own personal ineffectuality, true, but also a sense of the ultimate transience of all human desires for boundaries and possession. This does not necessarily provide a solution to the problem of social marginalization, or of the historical conflicts
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